Comment: Ideological basis of Chinese foreign policy in the post Mao period. (1993, 20 Marks)
Under Mao Zedong, ideology was revolutionary. China backed insurgencies, preached “people’s war” and, in the Three Worlds theory (1974), cast itself as leader of the oppressed. After 1978 ideology did not disappear; it changed its function. Ideology no longer drives Chinese foreign policy towards world revolution. It now legitimates the party-state through development and nationalism, and since Xi Jinping it justifies a Chinese view of order.
Deng Xiaoping: pragmatism as ideology (1978–92)
- “Seeking truth from facts” and “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (12th Party Congress, 1982) subordinated doctrine to modernisation; whether the cat catches mice mattered more than its colour. The Four Cardinal Principles (1979), above all party leadership, fixed the limit: economic opening, never political pluralism.
- The independent foreign policy of peace (1982) ended alignment with either superpower, and the judgement that “peace and development” were the main trends of the era (mid-1980s) replaced Mao’s expectation of inevitable war.
- Exporting revolution was dropped. Support for Southeast Asian communist parties was wound down, and state-to-state ties, investment and markets came first.
- The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first written into the 1954 India–China agreement, became the formal creed. Anti-hegemonism, once aimed at Moscow, turned against Washington after 1989.
- After Tiananmen and the Soviet collapse, Deng’s counsel to “hide capabilities and bide time” set the posture of the 1990s.
Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao: reassurance
- The New Security Concept (late 1990s) stressed mutual trust and cooperative security against alliances.
- Zheng Bijian’s “peaceful rise” (2003), soon renamed “peaceful development”, and Hu’s “harmonious world” (2005) sought to answer the “China threat” thesis.
- At home, the patriotic education campaign (from 1994) and Jiang’s “Three Represents” (2000) moved the party’s creed from class struggle towards nation and development. Abroad, ideology was defensive: a socialist China posed no threat.
Xi Jinping: ideology returns as a claim on order
- The “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation (2012) ties foreign policy to ending the “century of humiliation”. Zheng Wang (Never Forget National Humiliation, 2012) shows how this memory sustains nationalism as the party’s creed.
- “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” (2018), the “community with a shared future for mankind”, and the Global Development, Security and Civilisation Initiatives (2021–23), joined by a Global Governance Initiative at the SCO’s Tianjin summit (September 2025), reject the universality of any one political model and place sovereignty, development and non-interference above liberal rights.
- Scholars build on this: Zhao Tingyang’s revived tianxia, and Yan Xuetong’s “moral realism”, in which political leadership decides which rising power succeeds.
Interpretation
- Realists treat ideology as a rationalisation of interest: China dropped revolutionary allies when markets beckoned and allied with Pakistan despite doctrine.
- Constructivists see ideas as constitutive: identity as a victim of humiliation and as a civilisation shapes what China counts as its interest, as in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Alastair Iain Johnston’s Cultural Realism (1995) traces a durable strategic culture.
- Limits. China exports no universal model in the Soviet sense. Its contest with the US is over rules and sovereignty, not rival social systems, which is why the “Cold War 2.0” analogy fails.
The Indian experience
Panchsheel (1954) did not prevent 1962, and talk of “Asian solidarity” sits alongside CPEC through territory India claims and pressure on the Line of Actual Control. Kanti Bajpai (India Versus China, 2021) finds the rivalry rooted in perceptions, the border, Pakistan and power asymmetry, not in doctrine: Chinese ideology is best read through Chinese conduct.
Conclusion
Post-Mao ideology has moved from revolution to legitimation, with three stages: Deng’s developmental pragmatism, Hu’s reassurance and Xi’s civilisational, sovereignty-first claims on global order. Its constant core is regime security plus nationalism. Ideology no longer sets China’s goals, but it now frames and justifies its pursuit of status and order.